Page:The poetical works of William Blake; a new and verbatim text from the manuscript engraved and letterpress originals (1905).djvu/110

 68 'issued plain in black and white, or blue and white.' This agrees with the modest price {^s. each) at which Blake advertises the Songs of Innocence and the Songs of Experience in his Prospectus of 1793. The thirty shillings or two guineas which Gilchrist (i. 124) tells us the artist received for the first issue of the collected Songs probably refers to coloured impressions. The only uncoloured copy of the Songs of Innocence and of Experience known to the present writer is the very unworthy example, already referred to, in the Reading Room of the British Museum. This is a made-up copy, in which part of the plates at least were printed after the death of Blake and his wife, perhaps by Mr. F. Tatham, into whose possession they passed after Catherine Blake's death in October, 1831.

The earlier examples of the Songs of Innocence are distinguished by the simplicity and delicacy of their colouring, contrasting in this respect with some of the later more elaborately illuminated copies of the Songs of Innocence ajid of Experience. These last issues are printed upon larger paper and upon one side of the leaf only. The Monckton Milnes copy, produced after 1818, measures 13″ x 10$5/8$″, and each plate has the additional embellishment of a wide wash border instead of the simple red line with which Blake ordinarily surrounded the designs. In a copy exhibited at the Grolier Club at New York in 1905, the plates are surrounded by delicate borders of trees, vines, and even drapery. These frames, which are not more than a quarter of an inch in width, were added with a fine brush.

Besides the sixteen plates reprinted by Gilchrist, which, as Mr. D. G. Rossetti points out, are 'as absolutely the originals as those appearing in the copies printed by Blake'—except of course in having been printed from electros instead of direct from the plates, and in lacking the superadded water-colour tinting—there are three modern facsimiles of the Songs. The first of these is given in The Works of William Blake, reproduced in facsimile from the original editions (100 copies printed for private circulation), 1876. This has evidently been prepared from the very poor uncoloured copy of the Songs acquired by the British Museum in January, 1864, and, while it affords a fairly good general idea of Blake's designs, is coarsely executed and exceedingly inaccurate as to the text. The second is the very beautiful reproduction made by Mr. William Muir in 1884 and 1885, the edition being limited to fifty copies. The